Five more Dutch ISPs have been ordered to block The Pirate Bay.
In 2010, Dutch copyright group BREIN filed suit against Ziggo, the largest internet provider in the Netherlands, demanding that it be ordered to block access to The Pirate Bay. XS4ALL, another provider, was eventually added to the case, which BREIN won in a ruling delivered in January of this year. Both companies appealed the ruling, while BREIN took its victory and moved on to other targets.
Given the outcome of the original case, it’s not too surprising that BREIN has prevailed in its latest effort as well. The Court of the Hague issued a ruling today that UPC, KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile and Telfort must all begin blocking The Pirate Bay as well. They have ten days to comply or they’ll face fines of as much as €250,000 [$323,000].
The order covers 20 domains, including thepiratebay.org, thepiratebay.com and thepiratebay.se, as well as two specific IP addresses. BREIN had asked for a block on three IPs but the court ruled that one of them contained only content that was legitimately owned by The Pirate Bay, like images and CSS files. The court also denied a BREIN request that it be allowed to add IPs and domains to the block, which means The Pirate Bay could get around it by simply using a new domain.
The new Dutch blockade follows a recent similar ruling by a U.K. court, which resulted in a nasty backlash against Virgin Media when it became the first ISP to comply with the order. Virgin suffered an Anonymous-led DDoS attack, despite saying that it was not in favor of the tactic and calling for “compelling legal alternatives” to fight copyright infringement instead. The Pirate Bay itself quickly called for an end to the attack, saying that “DDOS and blocks are both forms of censorship.”
Source: Torrentfreak
